Rumbles in the Distance
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: There is no reason for Yuuko to like Clow. That just makes Clow's smile widen.......... YuukoxClow, auto conclusive stories.
1. Chapter 1

**Rumbles in the Distance.**  
_Thunder rumbles in the distance, a quiet intensity  
I am willful, your insistence is tugging at the best of me  
You're the moon, I'm the water  
You're Mars, calling up Neptune's daughter  
"Painting by Chagall", The Weepies._

It's three o' clock in the afternoon. Clow isn't sure how he knows it or why does it matter, but the knowledge moves sweet and slow through him, a lassitude in the air that is hard to understand, even when he isn't quite trying to do so.

It is also a dream. The certainty of that isn't one he's used to yet, dreams and future prophecies and nightmares still mixing up together, sometimes, perhaps forever. Clow he breathes in slowly and pushes himself up with his forearms, birds flying up into a sky that comes from a Chagall painting.

This amuses him, somehow, perhaps because the name comes from the future, perhaps not. When he stands up, the first thing he sees is the tree. It's an important tree and it's calling to him, so he walks towards it, wondering why it had called him.

Below it's shadow, a girl. Clow blinks and stops under the shadow of the tree and three steps away from the girl. Her kimono trails around her, butterflies almost fluttering on the breeze of this dream. She looks up and glares and Clow can't help but smile.

There are questions that need to be made and yet, he doesn't voice them. With the same certainity from before, he knows the answers will come.

"You're late," the girl says. She can't be older than five. Six, perhaps, and yet there's something that doesn't quite fit.

Clow smiles and sits down, even without her permission. There is a cup of tea waiting for him, and biscuits. The clouds on the painting-like sky twirl into spirals before they disappear.

"Am I?"

She glares again, picks up a tiny, silver spoon. She doesn't answer. Clow cocks his head to the side for a moment and he wonders about asking her name. He thinks about it for a moment but dismisses it as a foolish idea.

"You've decided to dislike me, then," he smiles, hands on the palms of his hands. The girl's spoon clicks against the porcelain of her teacup. "Because of my tardiness?"

"There is no reason for me to like you," she glares, a little. Clow thinks it's charming and his smile sweetens. "You have wishes but you won't make them."

"And yet, here we are," he muses, picking up a bisquet.

The little girl's glare intensifies.

"Exactly," she finally stops stirring her tea. She picks her cup carefully and takes a sip. "You make me lose my time. And you'll always do."

"'Always' is an awfully long time," Clow muses. He falls back unto his hands to let the dream-like sun wash over his face. It's almost, Clow thinks, as if he could reach and wrap long fingers around its yellows and reds and let butterflies sprout from there.

He doesn't reach for it.

By the girl's side, the blue of a moonlight field wrap around her dress and her hair and shoulders. Clow thinks that if he reaches for her hair, his hand will come back black.

When he does reach for it, but his fingers remain pale and clean.

"You'll _always_ make me lose my time," the girl insists.

Clow decides to keep that as a promise. He picks up his tea and takes a sip.

"It's delicious."

The girl doesn't answer, her small hands on the porcelain of her cup. Clow looks up again, as the dark and day mix up. He looks at the doll-face of the girl besides him and he feels content. He moves to stand up but, before, he kneels by her side.

"I'll be sure to bring dessert next time," Clow offers. "It's only fair. Chocolate sounds good?"

He picks up her hand and he brushes a kiss against small fingers and he looks towards the girl, her name – one of many and among them all the real one, perhaps, a secret among secrets – on his lips.

"I'll see you soon, Yuuko-chan." 

The girl huffs and doesn't answer. It doesn't matter. Her hand is warm in his.

Clow wakes up, thunders announcing a storm. His fingers are stained black from where he knocked the ink over the table.

He laughs.


	2. Tread Softly

**Tread Softly.**  
_I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.  
* William Butler Yeats in "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"_

It's one of his dreams this time. Yuuko stands up and she's in his garden and it's spring this time, so that his cherry tree is blossoming. As she walks towards the tree she wonders, what age will Clow look this time? Their last dream he looked twenty and he was about to get married. The time before that he was five, all wide eyes and sad wisdom far too large for him.

It is hard like this, because it makes her feel as if Clow has always been a part of her life and Yuuko isn't sure she enjoys that. Then again, there's nothing she can do to fix that -- Because there's time and there's time and there's them, who can move through time as if it was a suggestion, and it's too much bother to try and think which was first, which came second.

She finds him looking more or less her age: fourteen, perhaps fifteen years old, all gangly limbs and eyes already behind glasses, his hair now brushing his shoulders. He's reading a book, engrossed in it, but the moment she sits down besides him he puts it aside, smiling at her.

"Hello, Yuuko-chan."

"Reed," she says, ignoring the way he huffs, shaking his head.

"How long do we have to know each other for you to say my name?"

She huffs and doesn't answer further. In his dream there are no clouds, just vast blue skies and the flowers falling around them. One day, soon, they will meet. It doesn't matter if she's unsure of when.

"Am I here for any reason at all?" She finally asks, half glaring at him. There's something in the way he smiles that annoys her, as if he knew everything that would happen. She realizes that it might be true and it bothers her that it makes a difference. But their destinies are intertwined, strand upon strand and it's not only her destiny – or his – that who'd suffer if the strands were broken. Despite how selfish she can be, it's not enough for her to disrupt the whole balance of the universe.

"Other than the pleasure of your company, you mean?" Clow asks with a charming smile.

Yuuko huffs and starts to stand up.

"If that's all, I have more important things to dream about, Reed."

She can feel that he has a wish there, a wish that she won't ask her, and she sometimes wonder if sometime in the future he will. But for now Clow's hand closes around her hand and he smiles, apologetic.

"I have something for you."

"... do you have a wish?"

"No, I brought a present for a friend," Clow tells her with a little amused quirk to the mouth that makes her frown. But before she can snap again, he produces a hairpin from within the air and flowers that rest in this dream of his, lacquered and bright. "I would like very much if you wore this when we finally meet."

Clow puts the butterfly in her hair, let's go of his hand so that he can take strands of her hair and twist in a chignon for the butterfly to rest. Yuuko keeps her hands on her thighs, not quite glaring, not quite smiling, in a sort of breathless wonder. She knows the butterfly will be there when she wakes up from this, something tangible beyond their dreams, as if she needed any more proof that he really exists.

"... you're still a creep," she tells him, and then, softly. "Clow."

"Ah, I guess I am, dearest," he says softly. "I hope you can forgive that, Yuuko"

She doesn't look at his face, so she most definitely can't be sure if he smiled or not and it's not as if it was important anyway, because he's always smiling, even if his voice sounded soft, even if he dropped the honorific. And so when she leans her head against his shoulder, it's just to enjoy the way the cherry blossoms fall within his dream, and not because for a moment she can wait, there, even though he refuses to ask for his wish.


End file.
